Alan Bicker (4 December 1945–18 July 2023)
Alan Bicker was a distinguished anthropologist and long-serving member of the University of Kent in Canterbury, remembered for his dedication to ethnographic research, teaching, and the mentoring of students. His career spanned work in both Europe and South Asia, and his scholarship was shaped by resilience in the face of personal challenges.
Before embarking on an academic career, Alan worked extensively in farming and agricultural development. As a young man, he worked in agriculture in Portugal, then under the Salazar dictatorship, and saw the impact of authoritarianism up close. He worked in Zambia in 1966 and 1967, which gave him a keen appreciation of the consequences of colonialism and societal fragmentation. These early experiences gave him both a practical knowledge of agriculture and a sensitivity to the social and political dimensions of rural life, perspectives that would shape his later anthropological research.
Alan began studying social anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1982. For his undergraduate thesis he carried out field research in France, where he studied the lives of Polish migrants. As the son of Polish migrants to Britain, he had a deep personal interest in these communities. His work explored the complexities of identity, belonging, and transnational movement, showing how communities maintained cultural continuity while adapting to shifting labour markets and new environments.
After completing his undergraduate degree, Alan redirected his academic focus to Pakistan, where he undertook longitudinal fieldwork on agricultural systems and rural social organisation. He worked closely with scientists and extension workers in the National Agricultural Research Centre in Islamabad to help local farmers develop effective strategies to deal with environmental and economic change. I travelled with him to Pakistan in the late 1990s, to help him establish a grassroots driven NGO to provide concrete advice and support to local farmers in a rainfed agricultural region of Punjab. The NGO, sadly, fell afoul of Pakistan’s sometimes capricious political landscape and was “unrecognised” shortly after it started operations. His enduring legacy in Pakistan is University College Islamabad, one of the first partnerships in the country to provide courses in Pakistan that were eligible for credit in University College London. It allows Pakistani students to complete a significant part of their undergraduate course in their home country. Like everything Alan did, it built on his considerable business acumen alongside his compassion and scholarship.
Alan returned to his research on Polish migrants in France after his health made travelling to Pakistan more challenging. In his final years, he travelled frequently to Poland where he wrote, directed and produced theatrical productions and demonstrated his longstanding commitment to diverse forms of communication. Alan wore many professional hats throughout his life, and he was very pleased with being able to add director and playwright hats in recent years.
At the University of Kent, Alan played a central role in the life of the anthropology programme. He was deeply involved in both the Association of Social Anthropologists conferences and the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festivals, both of which were hosted at Kent on multiple occasions. His passion for visual anthropology made the Film Festival a particular passion for him. He believed in communicating in the most effective ways possible and that included film and photography. He combined scholarly rigour with a genuine commitment to students. He inspired students with a passion for ethnography and fostered a collegial and supportive departmental culture. Beyond academia, he championed applied anthropology and believed strongly in the discipline’s ability to illuminate pressing social issues.
While Alan wrote on many topics, his most well-known publications are perhaps the edited volumes he produced with Roy Ellen and Peter Parkes (Ellen, Parkes and Bicker 2000) and Paul Sillitoe and Johan Pottier (Bicker, Sillitoe and Pottier 2003). These collections shaped debates on the significance of environmental anthropology, indigenous knowledge and participatory research for development. His longstanding collaborations with Michael Fischer and David Zeitlyn ensured that he was always looking for ways to adopt innovative information technologies in every aspect of his research. When he deployed me to the field to be his “eyes and ears” in Punjab, he persuaded me to include digital visual tools, GPS trackers and ensured that I not neglect any potential benefit of “cutting edge” technologies (most of which now seem ridiculously slow and clunky).
Warm, generous, and loved, Alan Bicker is remembered not only for his scholarship but also for his humanity. His legacy endures through the students he guided, the colleagues he supported, and the communities whose lives he documented with empathy and care. One of Alan’s many gifts was bringing people together. Even at his funeral, both in person and online, there were Muslims in Pakistan, Catholics in Poland and a rabbi saying kaddish. He was predeceased by the love of his life, Lyn. He is survived by his two daughters, Julia and Rachel and three grandchildren, Katie, Joe and Dan.
References
Bicker, A., P. Sillitoe & J. Pottier (eds) 2010. Negotiating local knowledge: power and identity in development. (Anthropology, culture, and society). London Sterling, Va: Pluto Press.
Ellen, R. F., P. Parkes & A. Bicker (eds) 2003. Indigenous environmental knowledge and its transformations: critival anthropological perspectives: edited by Roy Ellen, Peter Parkes, Alan Bicker, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. (Studies in environmental anthropology volume 5). London New York: Routledge.